Unspeakable
by biggrstaffbunch
Summary: Ginny Weasley struggles in a world without words. [book 7 AU onshot] [HG angst]


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Ginny Weasley has not spoken a word in twelve months, two weeks, and three days.

She is usually not so fastidious in the keeping track of time, but she has found that in every moment she marks, she is one step closer to release from this hell. Death or rescue, she knows not which, but her respite is close at hand. Not that any good will come of the damage already done.

And there's been a lot of damage, if the thin, angry spiderwebs cut into her skin are any indication. Every inch of her pale, freckled flesh seems to be covered in a myriad of scars, some healed over into crusty, crimson bands that stretch raw and aching, some still fresh and bloody and perverse.

In between meals and interrogation, she counts. One new mark for every week she has been here. Fifty four jagged lines from the sharpened bobby pins that slipped from her braids so long ago. Her body is nothing but a tool anymore, a vessel, a calender. When they torture her now, inciting pain that thrills through her nerves and sets her teeth so tight that three have cracked already, her limbs flop uselessly and her lips do not even part.

She thinks her soul must have escaped through one of the gaping wounds in her skin, flying away and leaving her heartless, mindless, voiceless. Feeling the pain like a phantom, knowing it's there and really not caring anymore. She wonders how it is possible that she is still alive and then thinks maybe she isn't. Maybe she has already died and this is hell.

On the evening of her fifty-seventh mark, the door breaks open. Ah. Ginny idly dangles in the arms of Harry Potter, warmed by the heat of his anger and helplessness. He charges the Death Eaters that come at them, and Ginny muses at how _easy_ everything is when you have a voice to shout curses. To protect yourself. To cry out in mind-numbing, flesh-crawling tones. Harry mutters comforting words as bright lights flash around them, as voices rise and fall. The sounds are not louder than expected but Ginny just leans her head in the crook of Harry's throat and sighs- when one cannot add their own noise, the din of the world can be unimaginable.

A breath slips out of her chapped lips, but it has no sound. She is black and white in a land of color, and Ginny goes to sleep because no one would hear what she has to say anyways.

Ginny Weasley has not spoken a word in fourteen months, three weeks, and two days.

Strangely, this encourages others to speak to her almost constantly, as if to fill the void her empty breaths leave. By her bedside at Saint Mungo's as her external wounds were healed (and oh, the noise her mum raised at those) and then by her bedside at the Burrow, sunlight touching lips as they blur with movement. Ginny has learned to ignore the itch inside that makes her skin squirm, the prediliction to open her mouth when something moves her to speak. She knows that nothing will come out.

It took two weeks (and two desperate attempts to claw at her flesh) to for the others to discover that she cannot speak. The doctors puzzle over it, for there is no curse, no injury, nothing to indicate a proper reason as to why her vocal cords, so strong and evidentally able, refuse to come to her aid. Ginny just sits and listens to them all rage and rant, watches as the words that scream inside her heart spill from their mouths. It is as if a vise has strengthened around her throat, around her heart. Everytime she tries to speak, a memory flashes through her mind, and a quiet noise rattles inside her brain before air chokes in her throat.

_Oh,_ the others all think. _They broke her._

But they could not be more wrong. She did not break. If anything, she is victim to her indomitable spirit. Where they broke her body, they could not break her will. She would have died without speaking after that first day, after that first whispered threat. A thousand _Imperius_ curses, the threat of _Avada Kedavra_ and still she did not speak. Her body shattered, her heart empty, her soul searching, she did not give in. She did not speak, and now, she muses that she has probably just forgotten how. T

here are things more precious than her voice, than her words, anyway.

Ginny Weasley has not spoken a word in seventeen months, one week, and five days.

Once it becomes clear that she will probably never regain the ability to speak, despite healthiness, despite increasing mental comfort, despite fixing everything she thought was wrong with her, Ginny cannot breathe. The unfairness of it all, the struggle, the desperation...she would not survive these bleak weeks were it not for Harry.

Out of the darkness, the one person she is determined never to ask for help from again comes to her aid. Ever the hero, ever patient. Ginny thinks the only reason she withstands the care and concern from the guilt-ridden boy with such dignity is because he keeps his mouth shut. Often, he is content just sitting by her bed, running his fingers across the pink, healed scars on her skin. Sometimes she catches him crying, and the pain in her throat eases so much she almost feels brave enough to attempt- but no. Harry whispers secrets in her ear when she sleeps, and Ginny rolls her eyes, wondering if they all realize she's just mute, not deaf. He whispers how he is sorry and how he loves her and how he wishes she could say it back, but she'll never get that chance again, will she, and it's all because of him.

Ginny kisses him to shut his rambling up one night, and the startled look in his eyes is enough to command a bark of sharp, soundless laughter from her. After a moment they kiss again and Ginny thinks, as she breathes him in, that perhaps she could steal his voice for awhile, bond their souls so that her words are his.

Ginny Weasley has not spoken a word for many years. But in the end, she has found, there are always other forms of communication.

- - -finis


End file.
